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Related Experiment Video

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Assessing Working Memory in Children: The Comprehensive Assessment Battery for Children – Working Memory (CABC-WM)
09:05

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Published on: June 12, 2017

Attention to attributes and objects in working memory.

Nelson Cowan1, Christopher L Blume, J Scott Saults

  • 1Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65203, USA. CowanN@missouri.edu

Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory, and Cognition
|August 22, 2012
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Visual working memory capacity is limited by object number, not just attributes or bindings. Retaining attribute bindings requires retaining the attributes themselves, influenced by attentional focus.

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Neuroscience
  • Visual Perception

Background:

  • Debate on visual working memory (VWM) limitations: object number, attributes, or attribute bindings.
  • Previous studies hampered by varying conditions and lack of suitable mathematical models.

Purpose of the Study:

  • Reexamine VWM limits using diverse conditions and novel mathematical models.
  • Investigate the role of attention in encoding and retrieval within VWM.

Main Methods:

  • Two experiments employing change-detection procedures with varied color and shape attributes.
  • Development and application of new mathematical models for VWM capacity estimation.
  • Experiment 2 utilized a procedure with identical retrieval across varied encoding attention conditions.

Main Results:

  • Multiple attributes compete for attentional resources in VWM.
  • Successful retention of attribute bindings is contingent upon retaining the attributes themselves.
  • Attention direction at encoding impacts attribute retention.

Conclusions:

  • Propose a theoretical account of VWM capacity as a fixed limit encompassing attribute retention.
  • Incomplete attribute retention is possible within this capacity, modulated by attentional focus.